Starting today, you can now add up to two tags to a Hubski post. There are a number of reasons behind this decision, but these are the two primary ones:
1) Many users have asked for more flexibility when tagging an article. For example, if you post an article about Mars, is it better to tag it #space or #mars? The decision whether or not to choose a general or specific tag can be frustrating. Now you can do both.
2) This will improve our signals for content discovery. Allowing a post's author to be more specific about the content will allow us to better understand what the post is about. In turn, we will be able to better identify relavent posts for content discovery mechanisms that we are currently working on.
Functionally, a second tag works just as the first. You can follow them, and you can ignore them.
Of course, I'd be happy to further discuss the rationale behind the second tag below.
As always, feedback is much appreciated!
In sort of all seriousness, doesn't this sort of lead to "well if two tags are better than one, why aren't three tags better than two?"
If specificity were the only goal, then at some point you start to suffer from diminishing returns, as well as an increase in noise. The extent to which this would happen would probably be topic specific, however. That said, regarding specificity, I'm not sure where the average sweet spot would be. But specificity isn't the only goal. Another goal is getting content to people that are most interested in it, without unecessarily watering down people's feeds. IMO the balance here is to get the post in the neighborhood in such a way that a typical following pattern would appropriately pick it up. That is, if I am interested in Space Exploration, the tags that I will most likely follow should be enough to pick up most Mars Curitosity posts, without having to also draw in a number of non-Space Exploration related posts. Community tags was an effort in this direction, but as lil mentioned, it frequently wasn't enough, and I also found myself often wishing that I could add just one more tag to appropriately label the post. Sometimes I had to choose between labeling and editorializing for a particularly odd post. Another problem that I see with a large tag count, is gaming of tags. The less each individual tag is worth, the more people might be tempted to use the tags to optimize viewership. For example: #mars #space #upskirts, which wouldn't work too well on Hubski, but you get the point (maybe: #mars #space #poetry).
It's definitely underutilized, and it's a point well-taken. One thing that I considered is that when the community tag is used, it is often just to apply specificity. That's not a bad thing, but I thought it might be more interesting if that job was already largely done. That is, one tag often created a big vacuum, and the community tag that typically remained was the one that filled it. In addition the what thenewgreen said, I am looking at making the list of previously suggested community tags visible when you opt to change it. That might also make them a bit more interesting. That said, I'm always up for killing something if it looks like it has gone awry. If two tags turns out to be a bad thing, I'll seriously consider an alternate approach. We will see. I think it is worth trying.
We discussed this. I wonder if people even know that the ability exists? We are going to begin sending a notification once a new user gets the ability to give a badge and give community tags. Perhaps this will ramp it up.
oh no! The one tag policy was counterintuitive but really nice: You had to make choice.
And the community tag was cool for fine tuning. Now we're on the slippery slopes; I need 3 tag: #mars #space #nasa ... etc And on a personal level that mean I'll have to block twice as much tag :[
Don't worry about this slope being slippery. It took more than two years for me to make it this far. I'll definitely be watching to see what it does to the experience, and to my feed. I also don't want to have the feeling that it's difficult to keep my feed just right.
How do you add the second tag? I tried separating both by space, colon, semicolon, but in the end they always show as one tag.
Since then we have implemented the "community tag" option.
I'm quite new to hubski, and I think that it very refreshing to see such an experiment in online communities. Segmenting (well, organizing) posts is definitely a hard problem. There is an interesting discussion in SE Podcast #43 between Alexis Ohanian (Reddit) and Joel Spolsky (Stack Exchange) on how they tackled this in their products. At an early stage, Reddit hesitated between tags and separate communities: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2013/02/podcast-43-false-facts.../
Oh dear - what have I started -- and here I'm trying to pack for France. So mk, thenewgreen, and _refugee_: hubski is the best, most supportive, awesome community ever. Just look at the six great tips I got for visiting Paris in the springtime. The Hubski Loneliness thought - as I said, a topic that I need to develop more for another day - was about how people might sometimes visit a post, add an interesting comment or two, discuss it with others, like here for example, but not share it, or here where five different people commented, but only two people shared. I'm a little curious about that and wanted to explore more, but not now. (Maybe people figure if tng shares, they don't have to, esp of they have zero followers. On the other hand, shares might be part of the magic formula that gets a dot on the wheel.) I think there's something going on that I don't quite understand. It might be related to why so many college students are appalled when they get low grades and tons of corrections on English essays in classes I used to teach. They used to come to me weeping, saying "I got 90s on all my essays in high school." So I asked the high school teachers why they were giving 90s to papers that were FULL OF grammatical and spelling errors. They said: "We mark for self-esteem." "Even senior essays?" "Yes," they said. "Even senior essays." I wonder if Hubski sharing is something like not marking for self-esteem. Although I know that tng works specifically on building Hubski self-esteem. Tee hee. It's a much bigger topic than I have time to explore here. I'll read your responses from the wi-fi feed at the airport.As you have noticed, I frequently ask users to add a specific second tag. Of course it creates more intimacy when they oblige - yet still somehow avoid sharing. But "Hubski Loneliness" is a topic for another day.
As you can see, I was defining "Hubski Loneliness" as intimacy without sharing. Like having sex without kissing.
Sometimes I forget to upvote somthing when I comment on it. I get overeager to say my bit and push right past acknowledgment. I'll also sometimes not upvote a post that I negatively comment on. I read a lot of stuff on the internet that I enjoy but which I wouldn't post on Hubski. It's stuff that is interesting, but not stuff I care enough about to share. If a post someone else makes seems to fit that bill I'll sometimes add a comment but not upvote it.
Fascinating. I've always taken an odd pride in the phenomenon of Hubski posts that had an extensive conversation but weren't widely shared. To me, I feel it is evidence that people are thoughtful about the specific mix of posts that they make available to their followers, but that they are more than willing to get involved in discussions on topics that fall outside of this curation. It's a subtle and concientious type of interaction, I think. Personally, I am usually happier to see a comment rather than a share. Sometimes those three-Hubskier threads with dozens of comments feel like a good conversation at the cafe. Other people are around, but the discussion is still intimate. Hm. That's helped me to better define 'Hubski discussions' in my mind. Also, I think I would define my own 'Hubski loneliness' as sharing without discussion. Thanks, lil. Have a safe trip!
Also, while you're in update mode: can we get a feature where the first time I submit a comment to a thread, it sits at the top (for me only) so I can look at it, and then moves down to its regular place after the next page view? Basically what reddit does. Helps in lengthy threads if I want to proofread.
I've always taken an odd pride in the phenomenon of Hubski posts that had an extensive conversation but weren't widely shared. To me, I feel it is evidence that people are thoughtful about the specific mix of posts that they make available to their followers, but that they are more than willing to get involved in discussions on topics that fall outside of this curation.
I follow this thought process pretty often.